We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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As to the “Left” I’ll say briefly why [September 11, 2001] was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our “national security” calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of “Left” intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush’s legitimacy. So I don’t even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.
— Christopher Hitchens, interviewed in FrontPage Magazine.
(Link via NZ Pundit).
The President does not want to end slavery. The Congress does not want to end slavery. But the Lord God Jehovah wants to end slavery, and slavery shall come to an end.
– The father (a bishop) of Orville and Wilbur Wright, just when the Civil War was getting started. Check out the context in this fascinating Friedrich Blowhard posting, about that, but mostly about the aviation achievement of the Wright brothers.
Many of people who loathe Rupert Murdoch and who hate the fact he has been able to buy up the TV rights to so many sporting events, are the same people who have supported the regulation of British media companies which has ensured Murdoch never has to face any effective competition.
– Michael Jennings
The dumbest idea is to suppose that an inanimate object can turn a noncriminal into a criminal. To believe that guns cause crime is as stupid as believing that hammers and saws cause houses. It is the grossest kind of mindless superstition to suppose that some magical qualities of an inanimate object can overpower the human will.
– Charley Reese
Over the years it has become apparent to me that to discount the position of others on the basis of their number is democratically sound but morally wrong. It’s this feeling that has brought me, and others like me, to samizdata and to a consideration of libertarianism.
– JohnJo
Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their rights, in order that widows may be their spoil, and that they may plunder the orphans.
– Isaiah 10: 1-2
All I advocate is that the free market is the only known method of solving the calculational problem of allocating work to those talents that can engage in it most productively. The free market means in practice comfort, prosperity and abundance for all economically as well as maximising the sphere of personal autonomy within which we can enjoy our liberty and prosperity. Attempts to find other solutions to this key social problem have always been failures, practically and conceptually.
– Paul Coulam
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
– H. L. Mencken
Says Alice:
(I considered putting this on Samizdata, then thought maybe it wasn’t quite The Thing).
This is from Blackadder Goes Forth, a quite brilliant vintage British TV series set in WWI. Lord Flashheart is instructing a class of soldiers training to fly in the Royal Air Corps. Flashheart is the ludicrously loud and oversexed character played by Rik Mayall. George is the idealistic upper-class soldier played by Hugh Laurie.
And here it is:
Lord Flashheart: Treat your machine like you treat your woman!!
George: What, you mean, invite her home at weekends to meet your parents?
Flashheart: No! I mean, get inside her five times a day and take her to heaven and back!!
What a series that was.
There is nothing a power-freak likes better than replacing a muddle with a slab.
Natalie Solent
Poverty is a miracle, created by governments
– Leon Louw, Director of Law Review Project and Free Trade Foundation, South Africa
I think our attitude toward America should change … we have a chance, in America, to be the moral leadership of America. The problem is when? It will happen, it will happen [Allah willing], I have no doubt in my mind, Muslims sooner or later will be the moral leadership of America. It depends on me and you, either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country. And I [think] if we are outside this country we can say ‘Oh, Allah destroy America,’ but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it.
– Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a prominent American Muslim leader
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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